


Lottie

by Fangirl_on_fire



Category: Original Work
Genre: Original work - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fangirl_on_fire/pseuds/Fangirl_on_fire
Summary: The next day at school, we apologized to each other, and I offered to take her out for coffee. She told me with a smirk on her face that she didn’t like coffee and that she’d rather go for tea. I laughed and agreed, so we went to a nearby café after school. She ordered green tea, and I was wondering if she was the type of girl to be obsessed with gluten and veganism, until she leant over the table and whispered that the popular girls were sitting at the table next to ours, and she wanted to make them feel bad about the sugar-filled black tea they were ordering. We stared at each other for a moment, then we both burst out laughing.





	Lottie

**Author's Note:**

> This is an original work - it's just a short story that I wrote. I figured I might as well post it here!

We met when I was sixteen and she was also sixteen. I was walking aimlessly in the vast gardens of our college. I had just failed a test, and I was pretty torn up over it. I knew my parents wouldn’t mind – they would tell me that I just needed to try harder next time, but I was always much harder on myself than anybody else was on me. 

Yeah, and I already said that that was when I first met her. It didn’t happen like in the movies, with us bumping into each other and then going out for a coffee. No, I just sat down on a bench, and she came up to me and asked what was wrong. I mean, we were in college. Everybody was friendly with each other back then. Without waiting for an answer, she sat down beside me and introduced herself. Lottie, she said. Her name was Lottie. 

We started talking more during classes, and we were put together as lab partners in science. I don’t know how it happened, or I don’t remember, but one night I ended up in her apartment, covered in sweat and pressed up against her bare body. She pressed kisses against my neck, and bit my lip hard enough that a pearl of blood appeared on the torn skin, until I pushed her off. I told her that I didn’t even know her surname. She didn’t tell me, and kicked me out of her apartment. 

The next day at school, we apologized to each other, and I offered to take her out for coffee. She told me with a smirk on her face that she didn’t like coffee and that she’d rather go for tea. I laughed and agreed, so we went to a nearby café after school. She ordered green tea, and I was wondering if she was the type of girl to be obsessed with gluten and veganism, until she leant over the table and whispered that the popular girls were sitting at the table next to ours, and she wanted to make them feel bad about the sugar-filled black tea they were ordering. We stared at each other for a moment, then we both burst out laughing. 

I can’t remember the exact moment we agreed to be official. It’s been years and years since I thought of her. But anyhow. We agreed to be official, at some point, and shortly afterwards, her parents died. She cried for weeks, and I was a shoulder for her to lean on. I offered to let her stay in my family’s house, but she said it was fine, she already had a room with her other friends. 

When we turned eighteen, we went to prom together. She wore a long red dress which draped off her body like a waterfall, and spread out on the tiles when I dipped her on the dance floor. Her blond hair was put up in a messy bun, and she gazed at me with loving blue eyes. We were the couple everyone was jealous of, and when we graduated, we immediately moved into an apartment together. One day, she came back from a walk with a small, cream kitten that I immediately fell in love with. I fell even more in love with Lottie when she sat on the ground, cooing at and playing with the kitten, who she named Savannah. 

I proposed to her when we were both twenty, and she cried as she said yes. The ring was an elegant, simple band of platinum with a single diamond on it. I worried that she would have wanted a showier ring, but she assured me that it was exactly what she wanted and that she loved me, with or without a ring. We set the wedding date for six months later. 

That was the happiest time of my life, I think. That period when we were engaged. We were always laughing, always kissing, always going out to parks and beaches. We enjoyed life, and we lived it to the fullest. We were so in love. We made promises to each other that we truly believed we would be able to keep. Looking back on it, I think that in the deepest, darkest part of my heart, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to love her forever, and she wouldn’t be able to love me. But we were happy. We didn’t see any flaws in each other, and when we did, we were willing to accept them. 

That is, until she cheated on me. I should have known from the start. One day, I found a pair of underwear that wasn’t mine – I assumed I had an old pair I forgot about. She was constantly out late – I assumed her new job was harder than her old one, and she was always working late. She stopped kissing me as much as before – I assumed our honeymoon phase was over, and our love now became the domestic type that you don’t think about, but is always in the back of your head. I didn’t realize she was cheating until one day she admitted it to me, hot tears in her eyes, begging for forgiveness. 

I couldn’t believe it. Lottie, who had loved me from day 1 and who I had fallen in love with when she showed up with a case of chicken soup when I was sick. Lottie, who came home with a baby kitten and told me she would be our baby for now. Lottie, who was now cheating on me with a man who she barely knew and met at work. I screamed at her, and she screamed back through tears. She did always cry a lot. I yelled at her to get out of my house, to get out of my life, and when she stepped out onto the road, she got hit by a bus. 

I rushed her to the hospital in critical condition. The doctors took her in to emergency surgery, and a nurse told me that her ribs were crushed, and she had a lot of internal damage. I cried all night in the hospital, and didn’t stop crying even when they told me she would survive. I sat by her hospital bed, and told her I forgave her, but I couldn’t stay in a relationship with her. Our trust was broken. Still, I didn’t leave until the doctors told me that she would make a full recovery, and that she was in a stable condition. When I got home, I packed up all her things and left them by the door. 

Three years later, I met another girl. She was named Kathleen, but I called her Katie. She had short brown hair, big gray eyes, and she loved coffee. She also loved reading, and she had a pet dog named Sparky. Her eyes lit up whenever she talked about books, and I loved listening to her explain her theories about a story, or why someone was her favorite character. I loved her, and when I was with her, I never thought of Lottie. We were in love, but it wasn’t the passionate, vivid love Lottie and I shared. It was a calm, steady love, one you come home to. Katie was someone I could kiss before I left for work, and someone I could raise a family with. 

About a year after I met her, I proposed to her, and she accepted happily. My mother had never approved of Lottie, but she loved Katie, so she said yes when I asked her if I could give her wedding ring to Katie. It was a rose gold ring with three small diamonds on it. Katie worriedly asked me if I spent a lot on it, but I told her that she was worth every single star in the sky, and that it was my mother’s ring. She blushed whenever I told her things like that, and she blushed whenever I kissed her. Her cheeks were almost permanently pink, and her eyes always sparkled. 

Her wedding dress was straight out of a fairytale – it had a ballgown skirt that trailed down the aisle as she walked along it, carrying a bouquet of pale peonies, gardenias, and hydrangeas. Lottie and I were going to have red roses at our wedding. But that day, I didn’t spare a single thought for Lottie. All I could think of was Katie, looking so beautiful and her eyes sparkling like stars, blushing as usual. Her father gave her away, and when I slipped the ring onto her finger and kissed her at the altar, everyone at the wedding sighed in happiness. 

We found out she was pregnant a month after our honeymoon. We were both thrilled, and when our baby girl was born, we decided to name her Clare. She had fuzzy brown hair, just like Katie, and warm chocolate eyes, just like me. We loved her more than anything. She had a clear, sweet laugh that sounded like tinkling bells, and she loved crawling around the house.

When Clare turned 5, and Katie and I were both 29, I met Lottie again. I was at a park with Clare, and Katie was meeting up with an old friend of hers. Clare and I were sitting on a picnic mat and I was playing peek-a-boo with her. She was giggling hysterically, and I laughed along with her. Her hair had grown longer now, but her skin was still baby-soft and her brown eyes were still as innocent as when she was born. 

That was when I saw Lottie. Well, more accurately, she saw me. When our eyes met, I felt as if something inside me shattered. Lottie. The girl I was about to marry. The girl I would have had a life with, a family with. Maybe Clare wouldn’t have brown hair, but blond hair, and instead of having innocent eyes, they would have been filled with mischief. Lottie slowly came over to me, and I stood up. 

Long time no see, she said. I didn’t say anything. Who’s this? She asked, bending down to Clare and waving a hand at her. Clare giggled and waved back. Your niece? 

I looked at Lottie for a moment, and forced my voice to come out as cold and detached. My daughter. 

Lottie’s face crumpled, and then she quickly straightened it out, and put on a smile. Where’s your wife? She asked. I told her that my wife was out with an old friend of hers. Lottie’s fake smile faded a little. She told me that she really missed me, and asked me if we could keep in contact. That was my first mistake. I said yes. 

She messaged me a week later, asking if I wanted to go out for tea. That was my next mistake. I said yes. We met up at a nearby café. I ordered earl grey tea, and I wondered if she would order green tea again. However, she ordered a simple lemon tea. When she looked up from her drink and met my eyes, I could tell that she was remembering that first date too. Then, she had been grinning and a smile would have been playing at my lips, but now, we were both serious, almost sad. There was an overwhelming sense of nostalgia in the air. 

She asked me what my wife was like, and I told her all about Katie, about how we’d first met – at a book club – and how her eyes would always light up whenever she talked about something she loved. And how my heart would light up whenever her eyes did. Lottie looked away at that, her eyes wet. You must love her a lot, she said. I told her that I did. 

Then, she asked me if I’d ever loved her like that, or if our relationship was just a game. I froze, but she waited steadily for an answer. Eventually, I answered. I told her that I loved her more than the world itself, and that I loved her so much I forgot what hating myself felt like. Because I’d hated myself. I’d hated myself before she exploded like fireworks into my life and turned it upside down. I told her that she was the one who took our relationship as a game. 

When I said that, tears did start falling from her eyes. They slid down her face like raindrops, and her eyes were full of pain, sparkling from the tears. She cried, and told me that she was so sorry that she ruined it. That she ruined what we had, what we could have had, just for a man whose surname she didn’t even know. She cried that she loved me more than the stars themselves, and that she had never stopped loving me. That was when I stood up, dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table, and told her that I was leaving. She was still crying as I left. 

That night, I couldn’t stop thinking of her, even with Katie curled up against my side, her arm thrown over my waist. Even with my daughter sleeping peacefully in the next room. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way how, after all these years, she still gestured with her hands, and she still loved tea. How she still spoke to me like I was the only one in the world. She was a shooting star, a meteor, and Katie was simply a star, always twinkling steadily, always there for me. I loved Katie, with all my heart, but I felt as if a tiny spot of my heart would always be devoted to Lottie. 

That’s why I couldn’t stop myself from carefully getting out of bed, changing, and climbing into my car. I drove to where Lottie used to live, and sure enough, she still lived there – I could see her name on the tag that stated the names of all the tenants living on each floor. I pressed the buzzer beside her name, and she answered almost instantly. I stepped inside the building, and took the elevator up to her floor, heart pumping inside my chest the whole time. 

The second I knocked on her door, she threw it open. Her face was lit up with a brilliant smile, and she threw her arms around me, dragging me into her apartment and kicking the door shut behind us. That was how our affair begun. 

It’s not as if I loved her more than Katie, and I simply couldn’t bear to break Katie’s heart. No, I loved Katie fully, and I loved her a million times more than I loved Lottie. It’s just that there was something about Lottie, something about the way she was always so vivid and bright and passionate. Our affair is the thing I regret most in life. And I regret being weak enough to listen to Lottie’s pleas, and cheat on my wife and my child. 

It didn’t last long, though. Because about two weeks after it started, Katie sat me down and told me she was pregnant again, with twins. She was giddy with happiness, and while I was ecstatic, my heart was shattered. A week after she told me she was pregnant, I sat her down on the sofa and told her I was having an affair. She cried for days, but she didn’t kick me out. She didn’t even scream at me. She was just heartbroken. I apologized to her countless times, and I explained to her all that I wrote here. I explained to her how I loved her more than anything, and how it was just a moment of weakness, a moment of nostalgia that tore me away from her. 

Katie is a much better person than me. Always was, always is. She saw just how broken I was about it, and she cared about me enough to look into my eyes and see that I truly did love her more than Lottie, more than the universe itself. And she forgave me. She forgave me fully, without any remaining anger or reproach, and she told me that she understood. She told me that she understood what Lottie used to mean to me, and how she forgave me for a slip of judgement. 

So, I broke up with Lottie. For the second time. I thought it would be hard, but when I called her over to the café where we first met, it was the easiest thing I’ve ever done to look her in the eyes and tell her that I didn’t want to be with her anymore, and I never would. Predictably, she started crying instantly. She begged me not to leave her, but I didn’t listen and left, just as I’d done a month ago. 

The next day, her dead body was in the papers. She had killed herself, overdosing on sleeping pills. She had left a note which read “I should probably write a declaration of eternal love to my ex, but instead, I’m going to say this – fuck you.” I almost laughed when I saw that, but I cried instead. Katie also cried with me. She didn’t even know Lottie, and she still cried for her. She still cried for her because when we were first dating, I had told her stories about my time with Lottie and she had laughed the whole time. She still cried for her because she knew what Lottie used to mean to me, and what we could have been. It was just another one of the reasons why I loved Katie so much. 

A few months later, Katie gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl. We named the boy Kai, and we named the girl Lottie. In memory of the girl I used to love. When Lottie and Kai grew up, Lottie was always the more outgoing one, the more reckless one. When she was a teenager, she was the first one to want to drive, to try alcohol. It was as if Lottie’s spirit lived on through my daughter. Kai was mute, and he was very shy in comparison. He was very intelligent, though. And he loved piano, just like Katie and I. He loved reading, just like Clare. 

Now, Katie and I are in our sixties, and I barely think of Lottie anymore. All of our children are married, and all have children of their own. Lottie hasn’t crossed my mind in years, until now. The 40 th anniversary of her death. On the anniversary of her death, each year, I leave a rose on her grave. I still miss her sometimes, but mostly, I don’t think of her. 

There is one thing that strikes me most about her, though. One thing that I will never understand. When Lottie and I were dating, I always thought that I loved her more than she loved me, that someone as brilliant as her wouldn’t fall in love with someone like me. But I guess I was wrong. I guess she just wanted someone who would keep her tethered to the ground, even when her head was in the clouds. I just regret that I dragged her down too low, down underneath the earth.

Beneath the wet soil and fresh grass, beneath the red roses and white gardenias, under the soft, blue sky. Right next to a park where children now play and laugh, the sounds of ice-cream truck bells ringing out through the clean air. A few miles away from the man who used to love her more than every single silver star in the sky, and the café where they first met. The smell of coffee and warmth. A few miles away from the lady named Kathleen who always keeps fresh gardenias in a vase and bakes cookies for her grandchildren, laughing when they tried to take more than two from the jar. The feeling of family and happiness. 

Beneath the soil and grass. 

And the roses. 


End file.
